Month: December 2018

Scott Galloway is a professor of marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business. His company L2 creates some amazingly funny and insightful content, including this video on Scott’s “unsolicited career advice”:

There is a lot of wisdom into what Scott says, and I will incorporate some of these ideas into the core values section in the future. I have taken his advice on many fronts, and I shown this video to direct reports as an example of things to keep in mind.

In particular, developing skills that differentiate you, are key to the success of the business, and your colleagues do not seem to want to do them will make you insanely valuable. One of these for me was focusing on being good at software engineering, project management, and people management. Most engineers are completely uninterested in the latter two which provided plenty of opportunity to shine.

I have marked all of my favorites in bold below.

Get certified

College graduates had half the unemployment rate of those with a high school diploma during the 2008 recession

College graduates will, over the course of a lifetime, earn 2x as much as those with just a diploma

Be remarkable

Develop not just one area of expertise, but two skills that don’t always naturally go together

Invest in variance

Look at the six or eight things that are key to your firm’s success, and identify one or two that you can differentiate yourself by becoming an expert in

Move to a city

2/3rds of economic growth will take place in cities

Being in a city forces you to work with the best so you improve

Boring is sexy

The sexiest of careers are hard to get into and may not make you wealthy

A lot of money is in things that aren’t sexy

Delay gratification

“The power of compound interest is the most powerful force in the Universe.” ~Einstein

This is true not just for money, but for your own efforts

Invest in areas of your life where the payoff is in the future, but your efforts aggregate over time

Demonstrate strength and grit

Fortune 500 CEOs exercise every day

Don’t follow your passion

Be passionate about being great at something

Ignore the myth of balance

You are only young once. Take advantage and work your ass off

Fight unfair

What are you willing to do that the majority of the people around you aren’t?